The Moz Blog

The Linking Community

In the course of our work, we target some very diverse, eclectic corners of the web. In many ways, this makes our job easier - without a lot of SEOs, directories, spam or competition, the number and power of links pointing in and around the sector is relatively low. However, it also demands a significant amount of research into the potential link providers in the niche. Without the powerful, natural lniks from the market leaders on the web, success will be slow in coming.

Link market research is, in essence, an excercise in psychology. There's a portion of the effort dedicated to simply finding and sorting the sites in a sector and another portion devoted to scrutinizing the liklihood of getting a link (through any method - paid or unpaid) from the sites. Our experience has swung from one polar extreme to the other - there's no middle ground with web communities. We dove into the chemical engineering and plant construction field and found very, very little, but found a lively, active community centered around obscure modern painters.

Demographics seems to play a large role, and while sectors with the young, the rich, the urban, the college-educated and the English speaking have a great deal of influence with links on the web, those industries where the low-income, the rural, the blue-collar and the old dominate tend to have much smaller, more secluded communities.

In any significant effort to make a site or business visible in its niche, it's part of the job to find the likely linkers, no matter how small and make an effort. The only other option is to extend the site or its marketing outside the sector - another topic altogether.

3 Comments

One thing I think few people, including those in search marketing, truly understand is just how much time effective link development takes. While most professionals don't have this luxury, focusing on just one niche at a time will allow you to really understand the community you are targeting. With the improved understanding of the neighborhood and your topic, it only takes a few minutes per site to write a really nice and respectful email requesting a link that demonstrates your understanding of their subject. With some decent link bait and a good email, getting quality links is not too difficult in most industries.
Rand you are dead on with the demographics on the more secluded communities. In my experience the more close knit groups require this extra knowledge of the community but once you figure it out, the links just pour in.

I had another observation/question. Being in the category of difficulty for finding quality topical links that would drive the site higher I'm also looking into quality traffic, whether it helps with serps or not.
I've a highly ranked site for my main keyword phrase; 5 in G and 1 in MSN and Y. The other highly ranked sites are in the same business...but different regions. I have some links w/ a couple of them. Some won't link back...and I don't want to link to them...they are dogs. Others that are highly ranked...but below us won't link. (they aren't knowledgable). I find it hard to find sites that are not on the specific topic but would link back.
I look through other's bls looking for logical related topics and essentially end up trading links...but most of them don't add serps power or quality traffic.
A lot of this is hit or miss. I'm currently focusing more on the providers of potential conversions...whether their links help with serps or not. Most of that comes from scrutinizing conversion sources and trying to find similar sites with topics that might also drive conversion traffic.
I'm thinking of a new questionaire for customers trying to find different sites of interest to them that might have overlapping interest and topics to our site.
These are just ideas. Your comments are thought provoking, Rand.
Dave

Interesting observation and very true in my experience. Doing widespread SEO for diverse clients opens the door to a great variety of worlds. Volume and accessability to links has to vary widely.
My business area has relatively few. New ones pop up...but then from a google aging perspective...they aren't adding much power...at least not now.
Of course one could use SEO-Guys strategy and focus on one sector. Then you become the link acquisition expert in the field.
Interesting observation, Rand.
Dave